Archive for December, 2012

Finally, we had one of those lovely winter mornings: a wee bit of frost with bright sunshine and no wind. I dashed over to Mt. Si to get in a round before the Seahawks’ 1:25 kickoff. The rust showed and I settled for a blase 90 but on such a glorious day it was wonderful just to be outside.

I’ve made the final plans for our two-week trip to Tucson, Phoenix and Death Valley starting on Jan. 3. There will be some epic driving so we’re hoping the new Acura will help make for leisurely cruising on the highway.

Whew… what a gloomy Christmas Day in North Bend. Blowing rain with temp at 38 degrees. But that didn’t stop us from our regular holiday delivery of Christmas cookies for our neighbors. In addition to the traditional iced sugar cookies I tried out five other recipes, all of which yielded acceptable results. The real surprise was the oatmeal cocoa bars (the Saran-wrapped chunks in the middle here). They turned out like a very light brownie and I suspect they would be especially tasty with a lump of vanilla ice cream.

Today was the shortest day of the year; tomorrow we get 4 seconds more of daylight. By the end of January it will be an hour and twenty-seven minutes more with sunset occurring at 5:10 instead of 4:21. By the first week of February, I may be able to tee off at my regular 7:30 am time. Just about 180 days until June 20th’s sixteen hours of daylight.

After a couple of small dustings earlier, today we got a more serious taste of winter. It’s still not cold enough for lots of accumulation but we do have a couple of inches of sloppy slush to navigate through. The good news is, Saturday the days start getting longer again! This afternoon, we did a little pre-Christmas baking, testing a couple of new recipes including a chocolate ship brownie cheesecake. I can’t wait for that little treat to emerge from the oven.

This evening we attended a performance of The Vinyl Cafe, where Stuart McLean taped the Christmas show for his immensely entertaining radio program. Mr. McLean is an wonderfully gifted story-teller, of course, and the accompanying musicians and singers were no less talented. Pianist John Sheard was superb and the “Vinylettes” vocal trio were equally impressive. The three-hour show passed by in a flash and we had a great time. We were doubly pleased to have a calm, rain-free weather night and not too challenging Friday evening traffic into Seattle.